August 9, 2007

Obama’s Lack of Full LGBT Support Isn’t the Only Worrisome Thing

From Sapphocrat:

Upon learning that Barack Obama’s campaign had added a new “pride” section to its Web site, I snarled:

Obama can bite me.

He’s got a whole section of his campaign site designed to pander to us:

http://pride.barackobama.com/page/content/lgbthome

You are NOT my ally, Obama, and until the day you recognize your privilege by denying me my rights, I won’t vote for you — even in the national election.

There, I said it: If by some horrible twist of fate Obama gets the nod, I will not be voting for the Democratic nominee for president, for the first time ever. He has nothing to offer that would offset his stubborn stance on marriage equality, or his revolting pandering to the fundies. A strong background in foreign policy might have convinced me to turn a blind eye one more time, but he sure hasn’t got that.

Even Hillary brings more to the table (she’s been there already, and yes, Bill is a strong plus for her in my eyes; no matter how much crap he pulled on LGBTs, his reign constituted the best eight years of my life as an American) — and as much as I dislike HRC, I will be able to hold my nose and vote for her.

But not Obama. Never Obama.

To paraphrase Tevye: “If I bend that far, I will break.”

swimboy asked me to elaborate the reasons I think Barack Obama would be a bad choice for President, and this was my answer:

In my mind, because there’s nothing to offset his stance on marriage equality. Meaning: If I thought this was the one person who could (and would) get us out of Iraq and begin to restore our nearly ruined reputation with the rest of the world, I’d consider taking yet another hit for the team in lieu of his full support for LGBTs.

But — and this is completely aside from the marriage issue — the idea of Obama as foreign-policy setter scares the hell out of me. This is the man who is open to the idea of bombing Iran, and, just a week or two ago, pissed off Pakistan when he said he’d consider attacking that country in order to go after global terrorists.

I can’t even begin to imagine the repercussions of attacking Iran — and attacking Pakistan is even more unimaginable; Pakistan is (and has long been) a nuclear power. I’m not worried about Pakistan launching a nuke at us — they wouldn’t have to; their best bet would be lobbing a nuke into New Delhi, and wiping out our strongest ally (and satisfying their own bloodlust against India in the same strike). If you think we’re in a mess in the Middle East now, just wait ’til the war games start up in South Asia.

And, speaking of Asia, if he’s so reckless with his threats while he’s still just a candidate, what in the world does he intend to do about North Korea? (Nothing, I hope, because if he puffs out his chest at NK, what can we expect from China?)

Bottom line for me is that he has less of a grasp on the concept of diplomacy (and just plain not pissing off countries that can destroy you) than I do. That scares me, a lot.

So, there’s that. He’s got nothing to offer (except a lot of potential chaos) to convince me that life will be better with him at the helm, or that I should give him an inch on LGBT issues in exchange for a safer, more secure America.

And it goes well beyond just marriage equality; his stance on that indicates to me a lack of basic understanding about the issue of church-state separation. He says that marriage “has religious and social connotations” (sure, only as long as it’s been a social fabrication; it was originally a business deal).

He’s all too willing to “leave it to the states” — even though he’s said that his own parents’ (interracial) marriage was illegal (in states other than Hawaii, where they married). How can he then justify “separate but equal” for us? What kind of double standard is that for someone who claims to support equal rights — for anyone?

IMO, Obama’s problem is that he never grew up under the full weight of discrimination in the U.S. himself; part of his childhood was spent in Kenya, and part in Hawaii — and Hawaii is not Wahoo, Kentucky. I’m not saying he’s “not black enough” (I’ll leave that to black commentators, who say it plenty; see the quotes below from Rev. Irene Monroe and Jasmyne Cannick, for just two), but I will say I don’t believe he has the frame of reference his generational contemporaries do. He is of a generation (mine, in fact) for whom the Civil Rights era is but a dim memory; yet even I have a greater advantage in understanding what it means to suffer not merely discrimination, but state-sanctioned discrimination, that he does not.

Should his race be an issue? No — unless he’s going to tout himself as a champion of the underdog. Because he doesn’t have the lifelong experience of a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton, his race means nothing to me (if he had, then I would consider his race a plus, in that we shared some common thread; i.e., the lifelong effects of bigotry). AFAIC, he knows as much about my experience as Edwards or HRC… which is to say: nada.

OK, so what does his voting record have to say? It’s beautiful, really, on LGBT issues — it shows that he is not in favor of any bill that would strip us of any current protections, nor burden us with any further restrictions. But to me, that is the least any candidate can do, as opposed to fully supporting our equality, and actually doing something about it. His hypocrisy is even more glaring every time he pays lip service to us, while stubbornly refusing to give us the same — not special, but merely the same — rights he enjoys.

Whether it’s his religion getting in the way (which he says it is; he’s been quite clear that his religious beliefs are at odds with marriage equality), or whether it’s really that he doesn’t want to alienate Christian voters and other conservative Democrats, it doesn’t matter: He’s making religion a stumbling block for what it a simple, secular issue.

Finally, he took the same tack Hillary did when asked about Peter Pace’s comment that homosexuality was immoral: He hedged, he dodged… Even HRC tried to run damage control after John Edwards had the cojones to answer the question directly; I haven’t heard Obama even try to backtrack (although I may have missed it).

To round out my thoughts on Obama, here’s what a few other people have to say, and say better than I can:

What’s disappointing however, was Obama’s initial reaction to Pace’s remarks. According to the Tribune, a Newsday reporter asked Obama as he was leaving a speaking engagement if he thought homosexuality was immoral. Obama’s first answer was: “I think traditionally the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman has restricted his public comments to military matters. That’s probably a good tradition to follow.” Asked a second time, he said: “I think the question here is whether somebody is willing to sacrifice for their country.” When asked a third time, the senator ignored the question, signed an autograph, posed for a photo and then jumped into a Lincoln Town Car. Obama later clarified his position, telling Larry King on CNN, “I don’t think that homosexuals are immoral any more than I think heterosexuals are immoral.”

A calculated response from Hillary is no surprise; we’ve come to expect her to tap dance around all kinds of issues. And although he has been taking heat from his supporters for it, Obama has been remarkably consistent with his position on gay marriage. During his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign, he said “I’m a Christian. … And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.” While we may not agree with that analysis, he is certainly entitled to his beliefs. What’s disappointing is watching a man whose personal story, background and persona have the power to unite a nation that is clearly worn down by the politics of division and false choices try to find an answer that will satisfy everyone. We aren’t convinced that Obama actually believes that homosexuality is immoral. But what his reaction did demonstrate is that his commitment to equality goes only as far as political expediency will allow.

– The Chicagoist

As an African-American woman who is also a lesbian, I have a lot to weigh in making my final decision for who I am going to support. I obviously want someone who is going to do more than pay lip service to African-Americans but I also want the same concerning gays.

I like Obama, I really do. I went to hear him speak when he came to L.A. for his book signing. In fact, I have his autographed book on my bookshelf in my living room and every now and then, I glance at it and think, he may be the next President.

But with all of Obama’s audacity, he hasn’t been able to stand up and say yes, I agree that separate isn’t equal and gays and lesbians deserve to be treated equally under the law with the same rights and privileges as America’s heterosexual citizens. Now that would truly be audacity!

But that hasn’t happened and I fear that what is happening is that in this mad dash rush to get the support of the Black community, via the Black church, Obama is trying to ignore the fact that I don’t have all of my rights and that I am not treated equal. And if he can stand up and speak out against the war he should be able to stand up and face the Black church and say that while he may not agree with the idea of lesbians and gays getting married, that they do contribute to society like everyone else, including paying taxes and therefore deserve to be treated equally.

By the same token, showing up at Black churches and “talking Black” to the Blacks and showing up at gay organizations talking in circles about what you’re going to do if elected, which if you read between the lines isn’t really anything, doesn’t impress me either. Nor does trying to use your husband’s strange popularity with Blacks to boost your standings in the African-American community.

There’s a lot riding on this next election. It’s not just about the war, Social Security, universal healthcare, and the economy. It’s also about putting an end to lawful discrimination and having the guts to take a real position, the right position, on unpopular issues. It’s about reparations and America apologizing for slavery as much as it’s about my rights as a lesbian to marry the woman of my choice…legally.

So in other words, if you want my vote, you’re gonna have to work for it. Being Black isn’t going to be enough, nor is being a woman. And paying lip service on Sunday’s isn’t going to get it either.

I want the next President of the United States to be able to stand up on the right side of all of the issues, not the just the popular ones.

– Jasmyne Cannick

“He’s my favorite because he beats his kids with his hand instead of a stick,” is not what Bishop Gene Robinson said of Presidential would-be Barack Obama. On marriage equality, he might as well have.

– Blue Mass Group

As a supposedly bipartisan politician who understands and reconciles opposing views, and a non-doctrinal Christian whose personal identity and life journey shaped his lens to include those on the margins, why then, I ask, is this presidential hopeful not united with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer voters on the issue of marriage equality?

“I was reminded that it is my obligation not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society, but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided,” Obama wrote in his recent memoir, The Audacity of Hope.

But Obama’s audacity is not only his unwillingness to support the issue, but also his misunderstanding and misuse of the term “gay marriage.” The terminology “gay marriage” not only stigmatizes and stymies our efforts for marriage equality, but it also suggests that LGBT people’s marriages are or would be wholly different from those of heterosexuals, thus altering its landscape, if not annihilating the institution of marriage entirely.

But Obama’s remarks in a recent interview with Tim Russert on NBC’s Meet the Press spoke somewhat encouragingly about granting LGBTQ couples not marriage equality but certainly civil union rights.

However, having lived outside of America during its turbulent decades of the Jim Crow era and legal segregation, Obama may not know on a visceral and lived experienced level what those decades had been like for African-Americans.

But he ought to know, as a civil rights attorney, that granting LGBTQ Americans only the right to civil unions violates our full constitutional right as well as reinstitutionalizes the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson. As a result of that decision, the ’separate but equal’ doctrine became the rule of law until it was struck down in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

. . .

Although not a cradle Christian, Christianity became Obama’s newfound religious identity late in his life. And his affinity to conservative Christian beliefs not only informs his decision on the issue of marriage equality, but it also solidifies his decision about us in a community of believers like himself.

. . .

Obama’s The Audacity of Hope is not a must-read for LGBT voters because he fails to fully comprehend or sincerely commit to the issue of social justice for all Americans. He does not tackle head-on how the religious rhetoric of this political era has played an audacious role in discrimination against LGBT people, leaving us with little to no hope, his rhetoric included.

“In years hence, I may be seen as someone who was on the wrong side of history. I don’t believe such doubts make me a bad Christian,” Obama writes.

As LGBT voters, our job is neither to judge nor vote for Obama on whether he is a good Christian. It is, however, for us to judge and vote on whether he is a good statesman.

If he should run for president, he wouldn’t get my vote.

– Reverend Irene Monroe